Meandering anecdotes and an occasional incisive comment, courtesy of an overeducated, feminist former-professional, who is continually outsmarted by her overly-gifted children and genius spouse and who seeks refuge in books, cocktails, and the occasional Xanax.

Thursday, October 24, 2013

not the MUNI

Today I took a friend who is temporarily on disability out for lunch. She's been staying with another friend, and I invited him to come along. He was planning to take mass transit from San Francisco to Watsonville, and I suggested he come for Mexican food first.

The disabled friend suggested, as a lure, that we could drop him off at BART after lunch, his plan being to travel to BART, take BART to Caltrain, and then take a bus for the last hour of his trip. "BART is in the wrong direction from where we'll be going," I said, mindful of needing to pick up Lola after lunch. "But we'll be right at MUNI. You can take MUNI."

My friend recoiled and looked at me as if I were suggesting he eat larvae or crawl through the bowels of hell. "MUNI!"

I explained how MUNI runs right to Caltrain, much like BART. "You want me to go to Fourth and King?" he said, again regarding me as though I were suggesting he lick the floor of a gas station restroom.

"If you need to take BART, you could just take MUNI down to Civic Center and transfer to BART." This drew another long, incredulous stare. Soon my temporarily-disabled friend and I set out for lunch, without our MUNI-hating pal.

After lunch a MUNI train passed by us. "I see what you meant; it's right here," she said.

I drew her attention to how trains were coming from two different directions to merge at the relatively palatial West Portal station. "See, it would have only taken him four minutes." We pondered his resistance to MUNI, given that BART itself resembles the waiting rooms at the cutrate HMO I used to belong to, with truly horrifying stains on the upholstery (who puts cloth upholstery on mass transit trains??? Who??)

Later as I drove her home, we were in traffic behind a MUNI bus with a big cheerful poster with a "Take MUNI!" headline. "You should steal that, give it to F.," my friend said. "Take MUNI!"